Today in a month is kick-off time. Potential new Champions: Argentine, Brasil, France, England, Mexico, Czech Republik, Holland and Portugal. Trying to be a gentle host is all that Germany can add to this competition this year. But it was Gary Linneker, England, who once said that football is a game where 22 men are hunting a ball and in the end Germany wins. So there is always hope.

Today the tournament starts with the match between Germany and Costa Rica. Remember: 32 teams are fighting in this competition to find a new world champion. There is a very small chance that England is doing better than Germany this year, in this case I won't be in Berlin in August but I will great you from the monastery.

Well, that makes me feel better, Henning... that you were left a bit at a loss with those two jokes that Ken posted, too. I wondered how could I have gotten Henning's and found it funny, yet in having Henning's explained, I didn't get the examples given to help me .

I have to admit that the two German jokes I quoted were very extreme examples of the genre.

Germans know the problem with German humour. They make fun of it in their TV adverts.
In one, a young blond man walks on stage in a dimly lit comedy club. He walks up to the microphone and says in a dull German accent: “Good evening, ladies and gents, I just flew in from Berlin. And, boy, are my arms tired.” Silence. He flaps his arms like a bird. More silence. As he prepares to continue, the voice-over intervenes, sparing the audience any more of his routine. “Germans don’t do comedy,” says the voice-over. “They do beer.”
It was an advert for Beck’s.

If you find that funny then welcome aboard the good ship ‘Schadenfreude’.

Among the the many great things that Germany has given to the world are the BMW, Claudia Schiffer, the cigarette lighter, Werner Herzog, the Thermos flask, binoculars, the Heimat TV series, spark plugs, decaffeinated coffee, and the collapsible umberella, but best of all they gave us Schadenfreude.

I do fear the worst - England is going the old German way - in an uninspired, boring match they beat Parayquay by an own goal in the third minute. Everybody knows that this stragedy leads to the final. Germany might fail with this newly discovered happy hour football shortly after the group matches. But there are parties all around, the sun is out for good and people from other countries love to be here. Let's hope that it remains a peaceful tournament.

Well, Ken, Schadenfreude or not, that one has me laughing out loud... not because of the flying in [I've heard that one], but the one-two timing punch of the "Germans don't do comedy. They do beer." Of course, as German beers that are available here, Becks Dark is my favourite, so that didn't hurt any, either .

So, is this to say that Freud was a joke... one that came from the misfortunes of others? [We won't take that comment too far into literal land ~ the comment itself, or the overall of it, may already be an old joke in Germany.]

I forgot to comment that I liked the structure of Twain's comment.

Your first two, extreme examples... and I finally got the knock-knock one... remind me of the one joke I've been able to remember since 7th grade ~ "Ask me if I'm a truck." "Okay. Are you a truck?" "No." I think that's in the Idiofreude category .

My understanding on the decaffeinated gift is that arsenic is used in the processing. That may be an old wives' tale, of course, but I know that since hearing it, most times I've opted for the caffeine.

Now that I'm fully into the spirit of the joke style, I just reread and got the pub joke, too. Kind of a deadly form of humour, isn't it?